‘Metro 2033’ Movie Rights Secured By MGM

Hollywood’s infatuation with turning just about everything it can into a movie will continue for the foreseen future, as it has been revealed that Metro 2033 film is currently in the planning stages.

Rights for the Metro 2033 film were picked up by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (commonly known as MGM), with the film set to be produced by Mark Johnson. Johnson’s name is also tied to another popular book series turned major motion picture: The Chronicles of Narnia. F. Scott Frazier, writer of the upcoming film Line of Sight, will be handling script duties.

Initial reports from The Hollywood report suggest the film will be an adaptation of the original novel, and not the video game re-imagining by Ukrainian developer 4A Games; likely foregoing heart racing scenes of main character Artyom charging his flashlight. Joking aside, if MGM plans to base the game off the novel, then chances are the film will differ in both narrative and themes from the video game adaptation.

In the PC/Xbox 360 game, Metro 2033‘s over arching narrative was supported by subtle and easy-to-miss story points embedded within the environment. The game’s world become the star of the show, pushing aside character development in order to better convey the hostilities of post-apocalyptic life. This is in contrast to the novel, which placed greater emphasis on Artyom’s origin (which was depicted, albeit with some canonical changes, in the Metro: Last Light short film Enter the Metro) as well as his relationship with his family and the inhabitants of the Moscow metro system.

As a fan of both the novel and game, it’d be quite difficult to hide my cynicism towards a Metro film. While the video game adaptation differed from the novel, the environmental storytelling allowed it to do so in a way that played to the strengths of the medium while still creating a faithful rendition of the world writer Dmitry Glukhovsky created. Let’s just hope Mark Wahlberg isn’t set to star as Khan.